Call it adulting. Diego Pacheco considered his new life, his surprise knockdown and his valued position in the sport, and knew he needed to make wholesale changes.
The 25-year-old and top-five-ranked super middleweight opted to establish a training camp near his Los Angeles home, hired a new trainer and management team, and set his mind on a more dedicated path to becoming a world champion.
Saturday night in a DAZN main event at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, Pacheco, 25-0 (18 KOs), tests his progress when he meets Immanuwel Aleem, 22-4-3 (14 KOs).
Last time out, atop a December DAZN card in Stockton, California, versus Kevin Lele Sadjo, Pacheco was dropped in the eighth round en route to a less-than glorious victory, an event that meshed with other consternation, prompting him to take a needed stand.
“Being a [new] dad [to a daughter], being a husband, having people under my wing and needing to be sure they were good… It wasn’t just get up and go to Miami with the rest of the guys,” Pacheco said of his prior alliance with trainer-manager Jose Benavidez Snr. “I had to worry about my family, my daughter. I had to weigh all my options.
“After weighing out my pros and cons, it made the most sense to come back to L.A.”
Pacheco sought out brutal honesty and wisdom in a trainer, hiring International Boxing Hall of Fame member Buddy McGirt, and retaining Sheer Sports to direct a career where former top-ranked Pacheco currently stands as the No. 3 contender to WBO 168lbs champion Hamnzah Sheeraz, No. 4 to WBC boss Christian Mbilli and No. 7 to WBA titlist Jaime Munguia.
“I felt Buddy was that missing piece, that experience with hall-of-fame knowledge he brings as a world champion being in the corner of several world champions,” Pacheco said.”It’s all the little things.
“For example, in my last fight, I got knocked down because of a simple little mistake I’ve been making and getting away with my entire career. At this level, all those little things need to get tightened up. That’s why we brought Buddy in, and it’d been a great outcome. This camp, we’ve made a lot of adjustments, a lot of improvements.”
Pacheco said the managerial change has allowed him to focus on fighting as they tend to his promotion, publicity and career path while prioritizing a family-first mindset as Pacheco remains close to his parents from South Central Los Angeles while training with his heavyweight brother, Federico.
“Benavidez Snr deserves a big shoutout because I had a big talk with him and he was all up for it and wished me the best, saying I’ll be a world champion soon,” Pacheco said. “I had a couple years left on that contract with him as my manager. He released me to let me go do my own thing. That was big of him.”
That peace of mind has stoked happiness, freed Pacheco from distractions and resulted in a more focused, committed fighter, he explained.
“Just to be back here in L.A.,” he said this has been all I’ve known since before I was 20,” he said. “The years in Washington were good – I became a man there. Bringing that mindset and program to here, it’s been great. I have my brother here for sparring days, training days, conditioning, recovery. We push each other every day trying to keep each other sharp.”
The longest career break yet has allowed Pacheco to work with McGirt since March.
“I’ve always been a student of the game. Everything Buddy teaches me, I try to do it the best I can. Sometimes it takes a couple days, but I work on it until I get it done,” he said.
McGirt’s ability to adapt to opponents throughout his career is being shared with the 6ft 4ins talent possessing a 79-inch reach.
“That’s something we dealt with as he brought in a bunch of different sparring partners. With each different guy it’s, ‘This is what we need to do,’ and it always works,” Pacheco said. “That gave me a lot of confidence in believing in him and it gives me a lot of confidence to do what we need to do.”
Now comes the fight night proving ground of Carson’s famed “War Grounds,” which has played host to four fights of the year since 2007.
Pacheco isn’t looking for that. He’s setting out to convincingly defeat the 32-year-old No.13-ranked WBC fighter who went the distance with interim champion Lester Martinez in March.
Martinez takes on the unbeaten Luka Plantic on August 29 and victory there should set him up for a shot at the WBC title.
“It’s definitely important for me to look better than Lester did,” Pacheco said. “I want to go in and dominate and if there’s a chance to take him out of there, I definitely want to do it. I want to show my skills, my improvement, show what I’ve been working on, make the fight look easy. I feel I will break him down and eventually get the knockout.”
Pacheco promoter Eddie Hearn has been deliberate in his development of the fighter, and now that former undisputed champion Canelo Alvarez has lost his belts, the most compelling next opponent is new WBA champion Munguia.
“I feel Munguia is the biggest fight for me now with the exception of Canelo. We could make it here in L.A., and that would be the fight I would love the most,” Pacheco said.
Alvarez, meanwhile, is sorting out his own issues after losing to Terence Crawford in September 2025 as he heads to a postponed late-October match versus champion Mbilli.
“I think it’s a 50-50 fight. Mbilli is a strong, come-forward fighter, but Canelo has the experience, advantage, the power,” Pacheco said. “Canelo’s a little over the hill with his age, but it’s still Canelo.
“Whichever way it goes, I want to fight the winner, for sure.”
